Scott McCall's Arc

Chapter 11 of 30

They regrouped in the library after last bell. Scott kept his voice low. "Malik said he's hunting what's already inside them. Inside you." Kira's hand drifted to her pocket, where the jackal coin still sat. Stiles dropped into a chair. "Inside how? Like a parasite? A second soul?" Nobody had an answer yet. Kira pulled an open book toward her and flipped pages fast. Gods with jackal heads stared up from the paper. "It's not just funerals," she said. Her finger stopped on a column of text. "It's transitions. Doorways. Things crossing from one state into another." She looked up at Scott. "He's not hunting us. He's hunting whatever we're about to become." Lydia reached for her notebook. Her hand froze in her bag. Slowly, she pulled out a coin — heavy, etched with a gate and hieroglyphs around the rim. She set it on the table. They all stared. "I've never seen that before in my life," Lydia said. Her voice stayed level, but her jaw had gone tight. Scott's stomach dropped. He grabbed his backpack and dumped it. A coin rolled out of the front pocket and spun on the wood. Stiles checked his jacket. Another. Kira already had hers. "They're all marked," Stiles whispered. "All of us." Scott picked up the gate coin. The hieroglyphs caught the library light. Malik hadn't been lying. He'd been warning them. And he'd planted these to prove it — to show Scott he could reach every one of them whenever he wanted. Scott closed his fist around the coin. The game was in two days. Whatever was supposed to cross through them, it was going to happen on that field. "We act tonight," he said. "We find Malik. We make him tell us what's inside them — and how to pull it out without killing anyone." No one argued. The cycle had tightened. They were out of nights.